Meta
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One of the games I still play today is a digital card game. I’m not going to go into too much detail about it because I don’t want to see a bunch of eyes gloss over and fade away as I talk about it. It is a game that I have been playing since 2014 and the reason why I love it so much is that it reminds me of a card game I used to play when I was in high school, and since this one is digital I can play it on my iPad against people across the world.
The thing about card games, and other games as well, is that there are certain combinations of cards that make up a couple of the best decks that the majority of people play so that they can win the most. These best decks that everyone basically agrees are the best are called the meta. When new cards come out new combinations are discovered then a new meta (a new discovery of the best decks) is created. In fact, there are multiple websites dedicated to helping players find out and create the best decks so that everyone can play what is the best....what is the meta.
Another way to put it in everyday language is what everybody is doing and is generally accepted as the best. For a capitalist society like ours, the meta, is about getting a good job that pays well so that you can provide for yourself and your family. Then you use that money to also buy the things that you like. The societal norm is the go to school, get a job, raise a family, and then retire to enjoy the wealth that you have saved during the time that you were working. That is the meta, the standard of most capitalist societies.
This is actually not too different from the society Jesus and John the Baptist find themselves in as we begin Mark’s Gospel. As we know Rome is the world power that has turned Israel into a province of their vast empire. Rome has created a culture, a meta, of wealth being that by which people measure their lives and despite the Israelites despising Roman occupation, the coin does allow them some independence while also being the norm, meta, of society.
In the card game Hearthstone, that I mentioned earlier, if you don’t want to play the meta decks that most other people are playing then you would play an off-meta deck or sometimes a deck made specifically to counter the meta. These aren’t typically considered the best and they aren’t the decks that everyone else is playing so they are typically a small percentage of the players who use them, but they are there to do something different and get away from the norm or even the rut of playing the same decks against the same decks all the time.
John the Baptist was an off meta person. John didn’t care about wealth or power. He seems to have self-imposed a vow of poverty and to have eaten odd foods and dressed in strange clothing. Signs that says he doesn’t want to be like everyone else. Signs that he doesn’t care was the meta says, what society says. John is mostly concerned about repentance and forgiveness of sins.
But here’s the kicker; repentance in Greek is a combination of two words, meta and noos. These two words together create the word repentance. John is using the real meaning of the word meta to invite people to do something that is counter to the norm of society. Metanoeo can also mean to make a U-turn or to change ones mind from what has been accepted. John’s meta is to go against the accepted society. John invites people to reject wealth and to turn their hearts and minds back to God and to prepare them for the coming of God’s son Jesus. John does this through repentance, metanoeo, and by baptizing them in the wilderness.
Jesus comes to John in the wilderness, and is baptized by hin accepting this idea that the world needs to make a U-turn and change their hearts and minds from the way that Rome had made things the norm. Jesus went to a man who was an outcast, who was off-meta, by living in the wilderness, and doing all the things he did that were counter to Rome so that people could see that both Jesus was the one John was proclaiming about, but also that this idea that the world needs to make a U-turn and change their minds from what they had been taught was what Jesus was all about.
Jesus’ metanoeo, his counter-cultural movement was something that began at his baptism and continued throughout his ministry, but it wasn’t something that he took on by himself. From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus made this movement of repentance and forgiveness of sins a communal effort. He made it about community, and he did that by calling people to his ministry as we see him calling Simon and Andrew, and James and John. Just as Jesus is calling you and me to this new meta of shedding off the old accepted norm and once again taking up the mantle of following the life and ministry of Jesus even if it isn’t where society is going.
Which seems appropriate as we end 2019 and enter in 2020 in just a few days. A time of the year where we ponder giving up things that we shouldn’t hold onto and taking up, or taking on, things that we feel are important to our lives. Perhaps in 2020 we can take on a new meta of metanoeo, of focusing on repenting ourselves and forgiving others. Reminding ourselves that we are followers of the one who forgave us all of our sins so that we might be children of God who are invited to live in peace with one another. Just a few days ago we celebrated the birth of the light of the world and today we see that light calling us to go a different route, to make a U-turn from the way life has been going. May we call embrace and accept and truly believe that through Jesus we have been forgiven of our sins and that we can walk a different path with the help and grace of God, this day and always. Amen.